Summer Holidays are over rated

 I've never understood the logic of the long Summer break for schools and colleges - which probably explains why I devised a course that didn't have one. However that does now put me in rather a unique position to comment on the pros and cons around the idea of scrapping the traditional school holidays.

My research (aka google) informs me that the long holidays were first introduced to allow children to work the fields in the Summer. Now if this is true (for completely disclosure I didn't spend days trying to research the origin) there really is no reason why we've kept this pointless tradition, other than this is what we've all grown to accept as 'normal'. 

A long break is so problematic though. The basic economies of attempting to sort out childcare for long breaks is soul destroying. Who can afford to take 6 weeks off yet you're working to pay for . . . childcare. The cost of holidays and breaks during official school holidays sky rocket because of course you now get fined if you take your child away during school time. So you're forced to pay for a more expensive holiday if you're lucky enough to get away, and then when you're back you're pay for childcare. It makes no sense at all.

Today Nadhim Zahawi the Education Secretary announced that all schools will soon have to work to a 32.5 hr week. Now he fails to mention the fact that under the Tories a lot of schools can't even afford to staff the hours that they're doing already. . . but let's skip over that (for this blog). The fact is I believe that our children really would benefit from more school time . . . but also more regular breaks.

So at The MTA we work all year around - we do 10 weeks of term then 3 weeks off. What if all schools simply had to commit to 39 weeks a year BUT they could take their breaks where they wanted to.  Surely teachers, parents and children would benefit from this. Gone would be the nightmare costs of a 'bulk' of childcare, holidays would be spaced out better (rather than a big chunk in the middle of the year), teachers wouldn't have to crawl to the end of term desperate for the break as their breaks could be spaced out throughout the year, we'd lose the horrific price hike of holidays (which hopefully would make an away break slightly more accessible for people), children wouldn't be bored in the holidays missing their friends, anxious children wouldn't be dreading going back to school after the long Summer break, as they've only ever been away from school for a couple of weeks. 

The argument that I've heard in universities when this has been proposed is around maintenance. . . when would the big maintenance jobs get done if there wasn't a big Summer break. Well you know, simple creative logistical planning would sort that out. 

Just because we've always had these ridiculously overblown Summer breaks doesn't mean that we should stick with them.

I'd love to spend more time with my children and my wife during their school breaks, but we can seldom spend family time together as one of us has to work, so instead we have to split the childcare. Similarly growing up I never went away with both of my parents as we couldn't afford to go away during "stop fortnight" (when the mines and steelworks all down tools for a couple of weeks every Summer), so I'd spend that fortnight with my dad and then go away with my mum. They couldn't afford childcare so we were forced to split our break between both parents. Some 50 years later and my family have to make the same choices.

Divide the school year up into smaller chunks, with more regular breaks, once you get your head around it it truly makes sense. 14 years in and the only downside is that my holidays never coincide with my children's. Now then. . . if we abolished the 3 term/big break system, maybe we could all have some true family time with our loved ones, at a cost that we can afford. 

Drama Colleges Need To Stop Enabling Predators

 I've just finished reading the Diversity School's redacted report, you know the one where they invited people to give their accounts of what was happening in drama colleges today. That'll be . .  today. . . some 2 years after all the initial complaints were made that resulted in several colleges having to do formal investigations. Horrifying to read then that the complaints that had previously been upheld after investigation were being replicated some 2 years later. Where's the evolution? Where's the safeguarding? Where are the changes that they all said that they were going to make?

Now the report isn't clear as to whether these latest complaints were checked? I know all too well that some people for whatever reason, are capable of making false or unfounded allegations.  So I'd be interested to know whether the examples cited in the report had been verified by the colleges involved, or were they just taken on face value? Judging by the fact that certain colleges have already issued a statement saying (again) that they must do better, I also feel fairly safe with my next big statement.

WHY HAVEN'T THE COLLEGES SORTED OUT THE SEXUAL HARASSMENT  THAT'S GOING ON WITHIN THEIR BUILDINGS?

This is such an easy fix the only possible reason for the fix not being undertaken is that they don't see it as an issue.

When I opened The MTA I took advice from a lot of people (obviously), and one of the most important pieces of advice I got (from the Casting Director Debbie O'Brien to be precise), was to ensure that I had a strong boundary line between my staff and my students.  We chatted about various stories we'd heard about (keeping in mind this was back in 2008) but I didn't really need much persuading. I knew that both students and staff would be vulnerable without a clear policy on staff contact.

So one of our rules is that all communications between our faculty and our students have to go through the college. There's no mutual exchange of phone numbers or email addresses. Staff are not permitted to follow students on social media which back in the day prevented people from DMing or PMing each other (although that is now a moot point when some people just leave their DMs open). By removing literally all ambiguity we're attempting to protect both our staff and students.

We also talk about attraction as let's face it - there is nothing more seductive than talent. If your faculty and cohort are good they should all be falling in love with each other (except of course it's not love, it's lust, it's wanting the 'forbidden fruit' and when that 'forbidden fruit' is gloriously talented it looks ever more appetizing). With a faculty like ours, we would expect students to be in awe of some of the staff and would want to have a 'special relationship' with them (we all want to be friends with the popular people eh?). Similarly, staff can end up in awe of a particularly talented/nice student, it's normal and natural, but by having a strict no-contact policy it just can't go anywhere.

Now for sure - I've had both staff members and students that have tried to 'bend' this rule. Students will try to DM someone and say that they forgot the rule or a staff member might 'forget' and think that it's OK to give out a telephone number if they're needing to check on something . . . BUT this only happens once. A college is based on mutual trust - and I'm lucky that one of the parties will invariably raise a red flag to me if the rule has been breached.  We obviously take each case on merit (and to be fair it's only happened a handful of times), and it's usually cleared up very quickly. 

Twice in our history, it wasn't cleared up quickly though - and on both occasions, the guest creatives were told in no uncertain terms that they were no longer welcome at the college.  One had been doing an external project with some of the students, but their innuendo-laden chit chat had left the students feeling uncomfortable, and the other had been taking one of the students out for a coffee after rehearsals (supposedly to support them. . . but of course on every level that's a strict no-no).  Interestingly one of the perpetrators kind of admitted that they had crossed a line and just took the "do not darken our doors" approach quite calmly, the other though very quickly turned on the students and indeed the college, and denied that the countless meetings had ever taken place. Both reactions are interesting, but both people I believe abused their 'power'. Both might have had innocent intentions - but our rules are clear, and if you're unable to uphold them, it's our job to ensure that you're not around our students. Even more interestingly I've seen both people publicly berate others who are called out for the exact same behaviour that they themselves had done. How manipulative and perverted is it that they know that the behaviour is unacceptable but still choose to do it themselves?

Our staff and students are only permitted to socialise after shows (and then only in the theatre bar where everybody is around), and at our Gradunion ceremony. No ambiguity. Simple but effective hard-fast rules. 

If you have a culture where your students and staff are drinking alcohol together - then you will inevitably have a problem. The line has been blurred. Beer goggles, awe-inspiring talent, the desire for the "forbidden fruit" - it's an incident of abuse of power waiting to happen.

I've heard the line about 'but they're all adults' but let's face it,  it's just a smokescreen for people who know that they're abusing their position. By definition of the word faculty and the word student - one person in the relationship or burgeoning friendship will hold the 'power' and that is not healthy.  

If whatever is going on between people is 'true love', then it can wait until after the student has graduated, or the staff member has resigned their post.  Again . . . no ambiguity. It's uncomfortable for all the other students to observe a 'special relationship' developing between a staff member and one of their peers. It can lead to preferential treatment (or in some cases the opposite, a public bullying to throw people off the scent). However every student pays the same, so every student should be treated the same.

So reading again about sexualised abuse of power at drama schools is devastating, because it means that the people in authority at those colleges are enablers. A strong sentence. . . absolutely. However, they could protect both their staff and their students if they simply implemented, upheld, and policed a no-contact policy. It really is that simple. However, I'd go further . . . if you have staff that have a difficulty with that change in policy. . . ask yourself why, as that's your real problem right there.

Staff and students should expect to be protected from predators in a college environment. Let's stop thinking that performers are just edgy shall we and name it for what it is - predators prowling our drama colleges looking for their next prey.

Get them out!

Ambition over health

 Back in Feb 2020, a month before shit got real in a pandemic sort of way, my wife was advised to leave work and to 'protect herself', as this virus thing was nasty & given her medical history a colleague felt that she was at risk simply being at work. My wife works in a hospital - that colleague might have saved her life. . . or if an alternative narrative is to be believed - that colleague over reacted. Fast forward 2 years, and after 23 months of shielding (give or take a brief interlude) today covid finally caught up with my wife, only now she's triple vaxed, so 'hopefully' she's going to be OK.  That said, when my 5 year old suddenly started complaining of being hot today my heart sunk, as in truth we've been expecting this to hit the family given that in my son's school newsletter this week we'd been informed that 23 members of staff were currently off with covid, plus 11 out of 16 classes at the school had also recorded cases of covid. We didn't stand a chance - we have two children, and both of their classes were hit. My phone was pinging every day with another notification of a positive result. 

I'd love to think that this school was an anomaly, after all it was just this week that Boris Johnson announced that plan B was over and people should no longer work from home. In just a matter of days everybody can whip off those 'oppressive' masks and live a life of freedom again. Except for many people that freedom potentially comes at a huge cost. 

Since first hearing about the virus I've really done my research on covid. In a way I was desperate to discover that it wasn't such a risk to my wife, that if she caught it, she really would just have a 'bad dose of flu'. The research took me down the various rabbit holes that exist in the suddenly binary world of covid and covid deniers, the masked and unmasked, the vaxed and antivaxed - you get the picture.

Spurred on by a run in with a group of anti-maskers when I announced that I'd co-written a panto called Covidella and the Masked Ball, a run in which saw all adverts for the show getting hit on by people calling us child abusers for attempting to indoctrinate children, I spent most of lockdown one following the main protagonists of the anti-everything movement. I became fascinated by the alternative narrative that so many people were slowly buying into. The lies that were being perpetuated in a bid to make a point, the propaganda posts being put out by the people that were accusing the mainstream media (MSM) of . . . putting out propaganda posts. 

For a while I took to politely questioning their narrative, it was clear that some of the people involved were profiting from their stance, and I was curious how they'd react to an opposing point of view. I've blogged about this before - as all the people I challenged would first ask me privately to stop putting an opposing view on their timeline (let's not forget that these were the people 'fighting for freedom of speech'), and when I challenged the freedom of speech argument they would block me.  For these people a block is like a public flogging - as they tend to post about the block to their followers, knowing that lots of them will come at you to do their dirty work. It's a fascinating game of schoolyard bullying in a worldwide playing ground.

The pandemic has been so hard for everybody hasn't it? The lockdowns were surreal, and we all suddenly lived in some scifi movie with new words and phrases like shielding, furlough, antimasker all becoming an everyday event. 

I hadn't realised how hard the shielding had been for us as a family until my wife got her first vaccine back in early 2021. Both of us sat and cried tears of relief when she got her appointment. It felt, and indeed it was, massive. Finally there was hope of normality again. The collective relief was palpable.

Fast forward to now though and omicron has whipped up another covid wave, fortunately one that's known to be less aggressive, and that combined with the vaccine means that we've approached today's results with huge optimism. The stats are hugely in our favour, so we just have to sit it out now and hope that we're right. However I'm angry that a government so hell bent on saving a corrupt, inept PM has blindsided a nation on this. My son's school (like so many others up and down the country) have their hands tied. Really speaking with that much covid in the school they should be permitted to have some sort of short, sharp, circuit break in order for the outbreak to pass, yet Boris won't allow that to happen. Or following the controversial GBD route there could have been some leeway for children of vulnerable parents (& vulnerable children of course) to be able to homeschool for. a couple of weeks, just to keep everyone as low key safe as possible. However the law states that children must be in school. Literally lambs to the slaughter, hoping that everybody just gets a mild dose of it, and those that get hit hard are protected by the vaccine.  

Why the inaction? Well it must be clear to everybody that Boris's latest car crash of leadership was to play to the alt-right gallery within his own party, and suddenly give them everything that they've been asking for in order to keep their loyalty. Of course what he actually did was play into the hands of the alternative narrative which has blighted the pandemic, a narrative which was being fed daily with the news of all the parties that he seemed to have whilst the rest of us were in lockdown. Time and time again I've read that the parties were proof (if proof was needed) that covid was never really dangerous - if it was they wouldn't have risked their own health. Strange how people forget how entitled and privileged some other people are isn't it? Some people automatically assume in life that they'll be OK - that they're invincible. Are we really proposing that all the public servants at those parties weighed up the data evidence before accepting the drinks invite? Isn't it more likely that they all just wanted to break the rules and have a party - just like we all wanted to do, but the law would have caught us out. They were 'safe' in No 10 having their shindigs.

The alt-right narrative is so strong right now - the latest being the claim that covid only killed 17,000 people. A claim based on a freedom of information request - a request that was so narrowly worded of course the number was low. We're bombarded with the of covid or from covid questioning, negating entirely the reality of underlying health conditions, because of course nearly all of us have underlying health conditions. I have chronic migraines, that would be me down as somebody dying with an underlying health condition - yet migraines are not life limiting! 

When I argued this point the other day somebody pointed out to me that this viewpoint was akin to eugenics. I disagreed as I know some of the people that believe this stuff - they're not out to create a master race, they've just tumbled down the rabbit hole and can't see daylight anymore. 

Then today happened and I'm reflecting on what Boris's announcement this week really created. I discovered that the 'highly vulnerable' should all have been sent a PCR test to just keep at home from 10th Jan, and with that test comes a fast track to antiviral therapy should they suddenly test positive. Seemingly my wife is not the only person in the category that failed to get that package. In fact at the time of writing I don't know any clinically vulnerable person that received that package (& I've asked around).  Then there's the fact that a reporter discovered that the lifting of the working from home restriction should have included a caveat that the vulnerable should keep working from home. This was never publicised - my wife was due to return to work on Monday. 

I don't think that Boris is some Bond villain out on some perverse eugenic spree, I think that he's an entitled, spoilt, privileged, greedy, corrupt narcissist, who would make a pact with the devil if he thought that he could save himself the embarrassment of losing the job that he's believed was his since Eton.

He's divided a nation and has taken zero accountability for anything outside of his own ego.

A nation where people urging caution are called fear mongers, where paid for stats are bandied around online without any due diligence in order to back up whatever theory you'd like to subscribe to this week. Where influencers are being used as pawns in a game of division that none of us really understand. There's no right or left in politics anymore - it's all one murky swamp right now, where people are desperate to hang their hat on the peg that is most palatable for them.

Meanwhile . . . the clinically vulnerable are being hung out to dry. Oh and before you give me the rundown of what the lockdowns created. . . check those facts as a surprising amount of them are really wrong (regardless of what a friend of a friend told you). I don't want another lockdown, but I do think that there are pragmatic things that could be done to keep communities safer as we hopefully move back to a more normal existence.

A Mental Health Service in Crisis

Way, way back when the pandemic began (& yes you can singalong if you know the reference) I predicted that the pandemic would expose the mental health epidemic which was growing in the UK

There was an inevitability to this prediction, after all, I'm no mental health expert, I'm a mere musician who happens to run a drama college, and that drama college happens to be one of the most progressive in the way that we acknowledge and support people in our industry learning how to live with mental illness.

I was mindful that so many people manage the symptoms of their mental illness and indeed trauma too, by putting their heads down and cracking on with the task in hand, keeping busy in order to ignore them.  However, in our industry, all those 'tasks' disappeared overnight. Theatres closed, rehearsals stopped, auditions stopped, the hospitality industry shut down - Muggle jobs and theatre jobs disappeared overnight removing the need to crack on with anything. We were all left in our own spaces (and for many, those spaces were quite isolated), and left in our mind space. For the people that had been quietly fighting an insidious mental health battle for years, they were suddenly confronted with a harsh reality.

I got angry when people started weaponising mental health as part of their despair with how the government were handling the pandemic. As for so many people, the pandemic simply left them emotionally vulnerable - with nothing to do to mask their feelings, they weren't ill because of the lockdown, they were ill before, but prior to lockdown life were not confronted with the real state of their minds

I've seen a lot of people acknowledge this 'new' reality, and many jumped to utilise IAPT  which I have to say appears to have run rather successfully for the numerous people that I know personally that have needed to utilise it.

However, this has been successful for people dealing with illnesses such as anxiety and depression, for those dealing with the lesser publicised illnesses such as eating disorders, bipolar, PTSD IAPT just isn't equipped to deal with those in a time-sensitive way. Those illnesses tend to need more specialist medical interventions, psychiatrists who are able to diagnose and then sort out a treatment - but again the treatments for these sorts of illnesses are not straightforward either.  You don't solve an eating disorder with a tablet (though that might be part of the treatment), complex illnesses require complex treatments.

The waiting list for these sort of illnesses appear to START at 18 months, and for children requiring a CAMHS intervention, it can be much longer. Now I mention children as the key to a successful outcome for nearly every sort of mental illness is 'early intervention'. Catch the thing at the start, treat it, and then regulate it all leading to the successful management of an illness. I mean it makes sense, doesn't it?  You break your leg - the more you use the 'damaged', untreated limb, the worse the injury gets. You're straight to the hospital, getting an X-Ray, getting that cast put on, thereby ensuring that your recovery time is as little as possible. Well, mental illnesses are no different. 

This sort of early intervention though needs a robust, joined-up, mental health service in order to operate successfully, and as much as I'm a massive fan of the NHS, a joined-up service it is not. The gatekeepers to the specialists - the GPs are STILL hit and miss when it comes to mental health.  Amazingly some of them still dismiss mental illnesses in young people, and STILL put clear MH symptoms down to 'growing pains'. 

On The MTA's Instastory series 'In Conversation', I chat with a few of my graduates who were diagnosed with illnesses whilst at college, and all of them tell the story of going to a GP when they were younger, stating the same symptoms that they presented with at college, and the GP dismissing them and effectively putting it down to teenage angst.  All got treated whilst at college, and all are now thriving. Had they not come to the college, and had they not happened across a clinician who recognised the symptoms that they were discussing, they too would have been entering the pandemic about to be confronted with their own mental illness.

The purpose of this blog though is actually to offload guilt. The guilt of knowing that somebody is very ill and highly vulnerable. Having a vague idea of what sort of treatment they should be having in order to get well and 'balance' the chemicals in their brain, but hearing day after day how that treatment is not being started because the system can not do joined-up thinking. However also hearing day after day how much worse that person is getting, and yet there is absolutely nothing that I can do other than listen.

If I had a spare cash I would, without a shadow of a doubt, get them to another psychiatrist in order for them to receive the treatment that has been suggested to them - but psychiatrist fees range from £350 right up to nearly £1000 for a consultation and then you're potentially adding on numerous tests on top of that. One person that I know has already forked out hundreds for the initial diagnosis, but now they're back on the NHS waiting list waiting for a doctor to approve their treatment, and because of the complexity of the diagnosis. . . you guessed it. . . the GP can't prescribe the necessary treatment, it has to be approved by a psychiatrist!

Where the pandemic really hasn't helped is this idea that you can't go to an appointment or present at a hospital at the moment with a plus one. You have to go to all appointments on your own. Well if you're mentally ill, the chances are quite strong that you'll be unable to really talk about your maladaptive coping strategies, as you'll see them all as perfectly 'normal'. Whereas if somebody goes with you, they can highlight the difficulties. eg if you're awaiting an appointment to get diagnosed with an eating disorder, there's a strong chance that you'll not want that diagnosis, as you're happy lying to yourself saying that your current relationship to food is just fine. However, your loved ones are far more likely to recognise that your habits are not fine, and indeed you're effectively self-harming with your relationship to and around food. They will be able to name that in the room.

The solution to this requires the government to properly fund the NHS, a thing that we've seen time after time they refuse to do. Throw some money at the early intervention stage and you won't need to spend so much in the continuing care stage.  Throw money at the educators to ensure that they're able to spot the early signs of mental illnesses. Ensure that GPs are trained to acknowledge that mental health is every bit as important as physical health, and should not be dismissed in young people.

Until that glorious day comes then we also need to really train up effective mental health crisis teams, as I've yet to speak to anyone that's had a good experience with one. You need your top people on that team, not the work experience guys just filling in because you're short-staffed! I mean - I know that they're not really 'work-experience' guys, but honestly judging by some of the people that I've met whilst supporting people in crisis you'd agree with my description.

So as you're shouting about the ever growing suicide rates in the UK in a bid to weaponize the pandemic, let's get some other facts out there tool Facts like the rates have been growing year on year for at least a decade, facts like early intervention could prevent a whole load of those people becoming statistics, facts like better education around mental health would allow people to access help earlier, and facts like even when people are looking for help, that help comes complete with a waiting list, the timeframe for which for many, might be too long to even contemplate.

There IS a mental health crisis in the UK, but the mental health services are also in crisis, thanks to years of underfunding by successive governments. Weaponise that and try to make a difference.. 

Carefully Taught

As we attempt to navigate the latest path out of the pandemic some of the residual anger and resentment that we saw build up during the lockdown has stayed with us. Lockdown forced everyone to become reflective. World events shone a spotlight on systemic inequalities, and that slow burn anger suddenly ignited, sending people out onto the streets demanding change.

Of course in reality that call for change had been ever present, but a series of events amplified the voices to a level that they just couldn't be ignored. From BLM, to safety for women right through to 'freedom marches' there was a protest for everyone to get behind, whatever your own political beliefs.

The ripples of all those protests have been found in schools and colleges across the UK (and no doubt world). Students empowered by movements and causes that they can get behind have all vowed to make us a better, more equal society. For those of us that can easily remember the 80s it's quite a throwback. I was training during the student occupations in the late 80s, hell I even took part in one, we thought and indeed had to believe that we could create the change that was so desperately needed in the world.  I was raised by an ardent trade unionist who taught me to always stand up for what was right and to fight for injustice. In other words I'm all about radical change, but now a few decades on, I realise that meaningful change takes time, and we owe it to our 'cause' to have the conversations that will lead to systemic changes, not just quick fixes.

In our industry various institutions and organisations have been called out for historical wrong doings. Drama colleges in particular have been called out for poor behaviour and inequality.  So many intention statements have been issued around what changes certain institutions are going to undertake in order to wake up to this new order.

I think that a sad by-product of these important discussions though are the amount of teachers no longer wanting to work within the drama college framework. I've spoken to so many people recently that are literally too scared to teach as they feel that they're now unable to get things wrong.

Now before you jump on this blog and shout that it's a good thing that 'those' teachers want to leave, and that people who can't evolve and change should be kicked out, yadda yadda . . . hear me out, as I don't actually think that it's the 'problematic' teachers that are wanting to leave. After all, those sort of teachers are never reflective on their own practice, and will simply dig a trench of their own belief system and hide in it for a while until it's safe to come out. "Those" teachers will find other jobs in other sympathetic organisations that won't require them to even give 'lip service' to the systemic changes that are needed.

No I believe that we're losing the teachers that are desperate to get it right . . . all because the sudden hunger for change does not give them the right to get it wrong. One dumb comment, one thought provoking question can result in a social media backlash, or an official complaint needing weeks of investigation in order to follow protocol. Their confidence is being eroded, and a teacher consumed with self doubt is never a good one.

Whatever happened to nuanced discussions, discourse, learning from mistakes?

Again before you jump on this there are clearly some things that are just 'wrong' eg wilful mistakes that could and indeed should lead to a legal prosecution. However that's in a different league to a teacher just having a bad day and saying an unthinking sentence in the spur of a moment. As educators we should not be expected to get everything 'right' straight away. Like our students we have to learn how to exist in this brave new world too.

The teachers that I've spoken to feel like they've lost that freedom to get it wrong. One wrong word, one stupidly phrased sentence leads to them being called out as an 'ist'. However it's important to remember that teachers are fallible humans too. The thoughtless sentence that's hurt a student can't be assumed to have been said with a premeditated intent to hurt or damage. There's so much more to the issue than that moment. A context, a nuance, an understanding. . . a conversation.

Teachers are expected to take into account the wellbeing of their students, to acknowledge and make allowances for a 'bad day', to attempt to stay curious about why somebody reacted in such a way, as opposed to writing off that person for their actions in a single moment. We hold in high regard the ability for somebody to learn from their mistakes, we encourage 'daring to fail' as a mantra for learning. Yet teachers are now expected to just get it right straight away. 

We are all living through the pandemic, as angry and frustrated as students are for the slowness of change, teachers are also burnt out and spent, as they too attempt to navigate the change that is so sorely needed. However I believe that we also have to give teachers the right to get it wrong. Once again for clarity I'm not talking about things that are illegal, I'm talking about regular things where they just get it wrong or handle things badly.

Teachers should be afforded the same luxury of learning from their mistakes, being held accountable and also making right where necessary.

With the recent cases of school teachers being trialed by social media we have to be wary of these things as it's important to remember that one person's account is not necessarily 'the truth'. It is 'their truth', but we don't know what else was going on for them when they had those experiences. There is always another truth or another side to an event, and it is those two things that come together to create 'the truth'.

I spoke about this before having seen a friend be put through hell and back when somebody chose to lie about them on social media. As the person on the receiving end of the lie you have no recourse to defend yourself, as seemingly the first account of a story that people read is now considered to be the gospel truth,  after all, who would knowingly lie about 'such a thing'? Yet the thing is. . . people do lie.

I've had this experience countless times myself. Even quite recently on one social media platform somebody commented under one of our videos that they'd been to the college and had been physically beaten up by a member of the faculty during the audition!!! A ludicrous statement on so many levels, the person making the claim had never stepped foot in the college and other than this troll post had had nothing to do with us at all - but people were prepared to believe them, after all . . . why would they be lying?  I mean this is an extreme example and I called the person out on it, but you get my drift. Social media is as dangerous as it is brilliant. There was another case recently where somebody posted a wholly inaccurate account of a situation that they had been involved with, now for sure that could have been their experience of the events, but by missing out huge chunks of really important and vital information, their sense of injustice read true, however those missing chunks actually painted a very different picture. Again though - social media is not the place to try to defend actions. There's just not the space.  In an ideal world you'd call out these things, sue for defamation and have your day in court and a sense of justice, however the reality of that is that you have to be very rich to fight even the most basic of defamation cases. So you're forced to just leave it out there and hope that nothing comes of it. In the meantime, as in the case of my friend though, these wild accusations can lead innocent people down a dark path of despair. A huge price to pay for literally doing nothing wrong.

So what's the answer, as I really worry that we're going to lose a lot of brilliant teachers who really care about their students/pupils, and in truth I don't know. I guess we all have to keep striving to create workplaces where difficult discussions can take place, without fear of retribution when heavily edited accounts are posted online. Students need to be heard, but equally teachers need to feel confident with their voices too.  Is it more staff training? Is it more discussions in town hall type meetings within organisations?  We're well past the age of 'the teacher is always right', but equally we shouldn't be in the age of 'the student is always right'. I guess that it's mutual respect, constant conversations and an openness to change, and that change can sometimes come from getting it wrong, and both students and staff have to be supported and indeed granted the right to 'learn from their mistakes'.

Tis a brave new world, and one that we're all striving to belong to. It just takes time eh?